Main description:

Helping Soldiers Heal tells the story of the US Army's transformation from a disparate collection of poorly standardized, largely disconnected clinics into one of the nation's leading mental health care systems. It is a step-by-step guidebook for military and civilian health care systems alike. Jayakanth Srinivasan and Christopher Ivany provide a unique insider-outsider perspective as key participants in the process, sharing how they confronted the challenges firsthand and helped craft and guide the unfolding change.

The Army's system was being overwhelmed with mental health problems among soldiers and their family members, impeding combat readiness. The key to the transformation was to apply the tenets of "learning" health care systems. Building a learning health care system is hard; building a learning mental health care system is even harder. As Helping Soldiers Heal recounts, the Army overcame the barriers to success, and its experience is full of lessons for any health care system seeking to transform.

Contents:

Introduction1. Organized Anarchy in Army Mental Health Care2. A Brief and Incomplete History of US Army MentalHealth Care3. Organizing a Learning Health Care System4. Five Levels of Learning5. Building Analytics Capabilities to Support Decision Making6. Managing Performance in a Learning Behavioral Health System7. Creating Dissemination and Implementation Capabilities8. Leading a Learning System9. Translating Learning from the Army10. The Path Ahead